Saigon to Singers Glen

Saigon to Singers Glen
Author: Jim Bowman
Publisher: FriesenPress
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2017-01-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1525500678

On a global yet intimate scale, this thoughtful memoir invites you to explore a life well lived. Get to know Jim Bowman: he grew up in a conservative Mennonite farm family in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, came of age in the war-torn streets of Saigon, and has since lived a life of adventures across the globe, from the farming communities of Indonesia to the cosmopolitan city of Nairobi, Kenya and back to Virginia. In constellations of stories and philosophical musings, Bowman traces the transformation of his worldview. In his childhood, being faithful was mostly about following the rules of the church. His time in Vietnam as a conscientious objector and in Indonesia as an agricultural development worker expanded his perceptions of culture and ethics. Back in Virginia, the death of his son dealt a mighty challenge to the faith on which he had long relied. The raw grief and violent upheaval of his foundational beliefs led to a series of questions and new answers as he learned how to find peace again. Throughout the journey, Bowman's tone is humble, honest, and always open to the experiences of others. Reflect on your own understanding of life in this changing, increasingly connected twenty-first century by reading about one exemplary life....

From Dawn to Dusk

From Dawn to Dusk
Author: Will Troyer
Publisher: Llumina Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781932303544

A nostalgic look at farm life during the Depression. The Amish family lives a modest lifestyle until they become Mennonites and acquire electricity and a car. Threshing, butchering, making apple butter, and farming with horses are fond memories of the author.

Eight Little Words

Eight Little Words
Author: Otho Horst
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-05-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9781717219459

At nineteen, Otho was living the only life he had ever known or dreamed of knowing - being a farmer. But then a heartbreaking tragedy shook his idyllic world. As he angrily lashed out at God in the middle of a cow pasture early one morning in 1952, he heard eight little words that forever changed his outlook and the course of his life. Eight Little Words is the story of God taking a young man from a Mennonite farming community in Maryland to a remote town in Nepal and later to other locations of service. Through joining Mennonite Central Committee's Pax Service after WWII, Otho was first stationed in Germany to help rebuild after the war and then in Tansen, Nepal, to help build a new hospital in a country newly opened to the Western world. Ultimately, this book is an account of God's faithfulness as He unfolds His purpose and plan in the life of a man fully committed to Him.

Peace, Progress and the Professor

Peace, Progress and the Professor
Author: Perry Bush
Publisher: MennoMedia, Inc.
Total Pages: 608
Release: 2015-09-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0836147588

What does it mean to be Mennonite in the modern world? And what is the witness of a peace church that is always at risk of splintering? C. Henry Smith—son of an Amish family, erudite historian, urbane bank president, and pioneer of Mennonite scholarship—sought answers to these questions in the middle of the 20th century, and his answers reverberate through the church to this day. In this engaging narrative biography, historian Perry Bush chronicles Smith’s childhood in an Illinois farming community, his youthful turn toward intellectual inquiry, and his confidence that Anabaptist faith and life offer gifts to the wider world. By recounting the story of one of the foremost Mennonite intellectuals, Bush surveys the storied terrain of 20th-century Mennonite identity in its selective borrowing from wider culture and its tentative embrace of progressive reforms and higher education, and growing conviction that Anabaptism served as a taproot of Western civilization. Bush argues that Smith’s body of historical writing furnished a new generation of Mennonites with both an understanding of their shared past and the tools to navigate an ever-shifting present. Volume 49 in the Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History Series.